Number the Stars

"He needs a wife," she said, shaking her head, and attacked the old wooden floors with a broom while the rugs aired.

"Just look at this," she said, opening the door to the little-used formal living room with its old-fashioned furniture. "He never dusts." And she picked up her cleaning rags.

"And, Kirsti," she added, "the God of Thunder made a very small rain shower in the corner of the kitchen floor. Keep an eye on him.'"

Late in the afternoon, Uncle Henrik came home. He grinned when he saw the newly cleaned and polished house, the double doors to the living room wide open, the rugs aired, and the windows washed.

"Henrik, you need a wife," Mama scolded him.

Uncle Henrik laughed and joined Mama on the steps near the kitchen door. "Why do I need a wife, when I have a sister?" he asked in his booming voice.

Mama sighed, but her eyes were twinkling. "And you need to stay home more often to take care of the house. This step is broken, and there is a leaking faucet in the kitchen. And—"

Henrik was grinning at her, shaking his head in mock dismay. "And there are mice in the attic, and my brown sweater has a big moth hole in the sleeve, and if I don't wash the windows soon—"

They laughed together.

"Anyway," Mama said, "I have opened every window, Henrik, to let the air in, and the sunlight. Thank goodness it is such a beautiful day."

"Tomorrow will be a day for fishing," Henrik said, his smile disappearing.

Annemarie, listening, recognized the odd phrase. Papa had said something like it on the telephone. "Is the weather good for fishing, Henrik?" Papa had asked. But what did it mean? Henrik went fishing every day, rain or shine. Denmark's fishermen didn't wait for sunny days to take their boats out and throw their nets into the sea. Annemarie, silent, sitting with Ellen under the apple tree, watched her uncle.

Mama looked at him. "The weather is right?" she asked.

Henrik nodded and looked at the sky. He smelled the air. "I will be going back to the boat tonight after supper. We will leave very early in the morning. I will stay on the boat all night."

Annemarie wondered what it would be like to be on a boat all night. To lie at anchor, hearing the sea slap against the sides. To see the stars from your place on the sea.

"You have prepared the living room?" Uncle Henrik asked suddenly.

Mama nodded. "It is cleaned, and I moved the furniture a bit to make room.

"And you saw the flowers," she added. "I hadn't thought of it, but the girls picked dried flowers from the meadow."

"Prepared the living room for what?" Annemarie asked. "Why did you move the furniture?"

Mama looked at Uncle Henrik. He had reached down for the kitten, scampering past, and now held it against his chest and scratched its chin gently. It arched its small back with pleasure.

"Well, girls," he said, "it is a sad event, but not too sad, really, because she was very, very old. There has been a death, and tonight your Great-aunt Birte will be resting in the living room, in her casket, before she is buried tomorrow. It is the old custom, you know, for the dead to rest at home, and their loved ones to be with them before burial."

Kirsti was listening with a fascinated look. "Right here?" she asked. "A dead person right here?"

Annemarie said nothing. She was confused. This was the first she had heard of a death in the family. No one had called Copenhagen to say that there had been a death. No one had seemed sad.

And—most puzzling of all—she had never heard the name before. Great-aunt Birte. Surely she would have known if she had a relative by that name. Kirsti might not; Kirsti was little and didn't pay attention to such things.

But Annemarie did. She had always been fascinated by her mother's stories of her own childhood. She remembered the names of all the cousins, the great-aunts, and -uncles: who had been a tease, who had been a grouch, who had been such a scold that her husband had finally moved away to a different house, though they continued to have dinner together every night. Such wonderful, interesting stories, filled with the colorful personalities of her mother's family.

And Annemarie was quite, quite certain, though she said nothing. There was no Great-aunt Birte. She didn't exist.

9. Why Are You Lying?

Annemarie went outside alone after supper. Through the open kitchen window she could hear Mama and Ellen talking as they washed the dishes, Kirsti, she knew, was busy on the floor, playing with the old dolls she had found upstairs, the dolls that had been Mama's once, long ago, The kitten had fled when she tried to dress it, and disappeared.

She wandered to the barn, where Uncle Henrik was milking Blossom. He was kneeling on the strawcovered floor beside the cow, his shoulder pressed against her heavy side, his strong tanned hands rhythmically urging her milk into the spotless bucket. The God of Thunder sat alertly poised nearby, watching.